Our next steps

The OneVille Project’s pilot phase is ending, with specific efforts now seeded and living on. The effort at creating Parent Connector Networks may live on as OneVille, or maybe nothing literally titled "OneVille" will live on as such -- but all the work we seeded will grow.

Everyone on the project is continuing work on the specific tools and strategies we worked on in 2009-11/12. Many of us now hope to work with people in other communities to share communication tools and strategies that support collaboration between the diverse people who share young people's lives.

In Somerville in 2011-12, The OneVille Project continued to do the following:

-Test texting with students and teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave. We will wrap up the OneVille texting pilot by sharing our ¡Ahas! about texting with youth-serving organizations in the Somerville community. We're also now working with partners at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard to produce a teacher guide to safetly navigating the legal issues raised for those pioneering texting and other social media in schools.

-Parents and staff continued to develop the efforts of the Parent Connector Network at the Healey School.

-A pro bono developer in San Diego helped us complete the administrator and teacher dashboard views.

-Students and teachers who began their work in the OneVille eportfolio pilot now are seeding ePortfolios across Somerville High School. Their Somerville High eportfolio website also helps next teachers and students exploring eportfolios: http://sites.google.com/site/shseportfolio/.

In 2011-12, with funding from the Digital Media and Learning Hub of the MacArthur Foundation, based at UC Irvine, and in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, we all hosted a small "working group" of OneVille participants and local researchers thinking about how youth and adults can innovate new uses of commonplace technologies in diverse communities. OneVille participants of all ages came to share their work and ideas with local colleagues from Harvard, MIT, Emerson, and Tufts. A key goal for the Working Group was to keep honing our online documentation -- this wiki's. What online reporting would best support other diverse communities exploring such uses of commonplace and low-cost tech in public school communities?

All of the coauthors on this wiki continue to work on related work and will continue to write and speak publicly about what they have learned.

Mica, the original OneVille PI, has moved to San Diego for a new job as Professor of Education Studies and Director of CREATE (the Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence) at the University of California San Diego (http://create.ucsd.edu). There, with her new colleagues and community, she's extending the collaborative agenda sparked in the OneVille Project, testing next communication tools and strategies for enabling partnership between local K-12 teachers, families, young people, and university supporters. CREATE has particular strength in teacher professional development and youth mentoring/outreach, so Mica will now be working with West Coast colleagues to learn how to help network supporters to youth and local teachers to each other. While working to build next ¡Ahas! in San Diego, she will remain a remote ally to Somerville.

We know various OneVille participants will hone, over time and in collaboration with folks in multiple communities, free/low-cost communication tools and strategies enabling diverse supporters to collaborate in student success.

The Next Layer: Connecting to Folks Doing Similar Work in Other Communities.

We'd love to spark a lively exchange between people working on similar things.

Want to talk further?

Are you working on improving communications in your own school or community?

Audience: can researchers, teachers, families, and youth all share one form of documentation? (That’s what we’ve tried to do here. Eportfolio teachers made their own teacher-to-teacher videos as well on the Someville High School website: http://sites.google.com/site/shseportfolio/.)

How do you most effectively show examples of local efforts and innovations in public education? How many words can you use? When might you use pictures or videos? How/when can words and visuals go together?

Another Next Layer: National Networks for Sharing Local Efforts Like These?

Think about it: What might happen if lots of youth, families, and educators started sharing out their educational innovations more generally, online?